By Ron Nutter, Ph D
I wear a necklace made of silver created by a craftswoman in Carmel, IN. In my years of teaching philosophy and religion I would on occasion make a rhetorical point about Judaism and Christianity by holding up one side of the necklace, displaying the Christian Cross, and saying, “One cannot possibly understand the full meaning of this without a deep and abiding understanding of this,” whereupon I would flip my necklace and show the Star of David on the other side.
Over the years that little demonstration had greater and greater effect as I developed a course on the Shoah in which the first half of the semester was spent exploring Jewish traditions and beliefs with a guest rabbi, the anti-Jewish rhetoric of the early Church, and the anti-Jewish legislation of early Church councils and secular governments. Over time Jews were restricted in where they could live, how they might make a living, banned from owning land, ordered not to converse with Christians, prohibited from appearing in public during Christian holidays, denied education in the professions, forced to wear distinctive clothing so everyone would know them to be a Jew, and more.
All of this was long, long before Adolf Hitler came on the scene. In fact, with the exception of organized bureaucratic and technology-based extermination, there is hardly anything in the Nuremburg Laws against the Jews that was not passed in an earlier time by a Church council or a Church-influenced state government.
The course would come to the nineteenth century and discuss the progressive and scientific theories of race and eugenics, which were popular at the time. Up to then, the problem with Jews from a Christian perspective was “bad thinking” and “spiritual blindness and stubbornness” which leads to their ongoing rejection of Jesus Christ. Theories of race introduce the notion that it’s not bad thinking, but bad blood. Thus the anti-Jewish rhetoric of the past is transformed into anti-Semitism.
There is a logic – a tragic one – to hatred of Jews. The early Church essentially said, “You shall not live among us as Jews.” Thus the attempts to convert Jews to Christianity, sometimes forcibly. In the medieval period that was transformed to “You shall not live among us.” This was the period of either forced expulsions or the ghettoization of Jews. This was followed logically by the next step: “You shall not live.” Which brings us to Hitler’s attempt to exterminate Jews in the Shoah.
The second half of the course reviewed the rise of Hitler and the mechanics of the Shoah. Most students had some idea, having heard in general terms about the Holocaust, but nearly all were completely dumbfounded to learn of the anti-Jewish activity of the early Church and of the anti-Semitic views which came to influence many Western states and eventually dominate the politics of Nazi Germany.
I am now retired from teaching. I still wear that necklace, and have since the day I was married on August 21, 1982. Curiously, it is only now I am beginning to feel the weight of my necklace. Seeing the emotions unleashed recently during the conflict in Gaza I am fearful of what I once thought could never happen: Anti-Semitism again stalks the land looking for Jewish blood. What I have spent my life trying to expose so that it might never happen again seems to be back, often with a quite sinister and maniacal passion.
It is at this time of increasing anti-Semitic activity that I am compelled to write so that others might be aware of the long tradition of anti-Jewish and anti-Semitic rhetoric and activity. This is needed so that all will realize that the current rise in anti-Semitism is not exclusively caused by Gaza or the Palestinian question or by Israel. Rather, it is simply an extension of what has gone on for 2,000 years.
It was a happier time when I first had the necklace made. I was a student at a Christian seminary at the time. Among classes I had taken was one co-taught by Clark Williamson, a Christian theologian, and Jonathan Stein, a Jewish rabbi. Spending a semester in intensive study of the Jewish religion was eye-opening and led to a great respect for the roots of Jewish beliefs and traditions. That course was followed by another taught by Williamson in which the history of anti-Jewish thought within the Church was exposed. More than eye-opening, it was a shameful legacy that Christians must bear, though I dare say most have no idea of the injustice and violence heaped on Jews through the centuries. It is for good reason that this anti-Jewish sentiment is known as The Longest Hate.
What I have come to learn in subsequent years is that anti-Jewish rhetoric is repeated, and expanded, by nearly all of the Church Fathers. Melito of Sardis, Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, Augustine, Tertullian, Origen, Hippolytus, Gregory of Nyssa, Cyprian of Carthage, and Novatian of Rome all expressed contempt of Jews and Judaism. And this is only a partial listing of those engaged in the Adversus Judaeus preaching of the early Church.
One voice of anti-Jewish rhetoric needs to be highlighted. In 1543 a truly malevolent attack on Jews was written by Martin Luther, the father of the Reformation. The title of the pamphlet was On The Jews and Their Lies. In it, using the most risible insults imaginable, Luther lays out what he believes should be done with the Jews. It was a seven-fold plan, including
1) the destruction of synagogues and Jewish schools,
2) that Jewish homes should be razed and destroyed and the Jews forced to live in a communal barn-like structure or barracks,
3) that all prayer books and Talmudic writings should be taken from them,
4) that rabbis should henceforth be forbidden to teach on pain of death,
5) that safe conduct for Jews on the highways of the land should be ended and they should be forced to remain indoors,
6) that usury should be ended for Jews as it is for Christians and that Jewish wealth through money-lending be confiscated, and
7) a recommendation that tools be placed into the hands of Jews and that they be forced to work.
When you look at that list, it kind of looks like a Nazi concentration camp, doesn’t it? Not an extermination camp, but the typical work camp. In fact, one of the defendants at the Nuremburg war crimes trial, Julius Streicher, editor of the notoriously anti-Semitic newspaper Der Stürmer, defended himself at trial by claiming he merely advocated and did what Martin Luther recommended be done.
Luther ended on a flourish, pleading:
[T]hat our rulers. . . . must act like a good physician who, when gangrene has set in, proceeds without mercy to cut, saw, and burn flesh, veins, bone, and marrow. Such a procedure must also be followed in this instance. Burn down their synagogues, forbid all that I enumerated earlier, force them to work, and deal harshly with them, . . . I have done my duty. Now let everyone see to his. I am exonerated.
I have to say there is always fallout when one exposes for public view a man who is seen as a paragon of faith and virtue. Teaching my course there was a young woman who was a devout Lutheran. Learning what Luther had to say about Jews in class one day she was literally reduced to tears. There is no joy to be taken in seeing another’s ideals tarnished. I could only hope that in the wisdom of her years she is able to separate what theological wisdom Luther had to offer from his contemptuous disdain of Jews.
Simultaneous to the ravaging of Jews verbally and theologically there was anti-Jewish legislation passed by Church councils and synods as well as secular governments. To name just one, in 1215 at the Fourth Lateran Council it was proclaimed that all Jews in all provinces must wear distinctive clothing so that all who see them in public will know them to be Jews. This comes as a shock to those who think Hitler started that policy with his ordering Jews to wear the Star of David in public. Their rights being restricted or outright denied from state to state, region to region, Jews found themselves stateless, with few ways of making a living. The church and the state appeared to be working in concert to make the lives of Jews more and more impossible.
Some felt a justification was needed to attack the Jews, and indeed justifications were found in certain popular charges against Jews. One was the “ritual murder” charge, sometimes known as “blood libel.” The charge is that Jews would kidnap a young Christian boy and drain his blood for the making of matzos for holiday meals. The charge was first made in Norwich, England, in 1144. By the end of that century the charge was being made everywhere Jews lived among Christians. The charge has been made in the twentieth century in Germany, Russia, and even in New York State. Bernard Malamud’s novel The Fixer is based on the famous 1913 trial in Kiev,
Russia, of Mendel Beiliss. He was accused of killing a young boy, and a witness for the prosecution, a Catholic priest, explained the murder in terms of the “blood libel” ritual.
Unfortunately, as chronicled by The Middle East Media Research Institute, the ritual murder charge is still with us as Islamic Imams and Muslim media incessantly claim Arab children are kidnapped and their blood drained for the making of matzos. The Associated Press recently reported a variation of the ritual murder charge when it passed along the charge that Israel’s IDF soldiers were taking body parts from Palestinians killed in the recent Gaza fighting. The AP quickly removed the story, but no doubt it is still preserved in Muslim media archives.
Another popular charge against Jews was “desecration of the Host.” Interestingly, this charge never arises until after the Church establishes its teaching of Transubstantiation, which proffers that during the Eucharist the actual body and blood of Christ are present in the bread and wine. The desecration of the Host charge essentially says Jews would steal into Catholic churches and steal the consecrated Host and then stab it repeatedly, thus killing Christ again.
A third popular charge was that Jews were “poisoning the wells” of Christians. This is associated with the Black Plague of 1347-49. No one at the time understood the epidemiology of the disease, but they did see that Christians were being affected and Jews were not. Thus it was concluded that the Jews must be doing it. There is, however, a simple explanation for why Jews were not affected: they took baths. Personal hygiene among Christians was negligible to non-existent at the time. It is for good reason writers of this period would make much of a young woman with “sweet breath” because it was quite rare.
A critical turn in attitudes toward Jews takes place with the coming of theories of race in the nineteenth century. Joseph Arthur Comte de Gobineau was an early nineteenth-century French aristocrat who became known for advocating white supremacy and developing a racialist theory of the “Aryan Master Race” in his book An Essay on the Inequality of the Human Races. He developed the term “Semite” to refer to Arabs and Jews in the Middle East who represented to him the bottom of the racial ladder. He set the stage for what came to be known as the “Nordic Theory.”
The Nordic Theory, prevalent in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in Western Europe and the United States, was a major influence on Nazi ideology. The theory claims that Nordic peoples constitute a “master race” because of their “innate racial capacity for leadership.” The chief representative of the Nordic Theory in America was Madison Grant, who lived from 1865-1937. He was a eugenicist who employed the Nordic Theory in an effort to restrict entry into the U.S. of Mediterranean peoples. He declared the mixing of the races to be “race suicide.” Unless eugenics was practiced, he claimed, the Nordic race in the U.S. will be supplanted by the “inferior” races.
Grant was very influential among government policy makers and even in popular culture. The character of Tom Buchanan in The Great Gatsby is a clear and outspoken advocate of the racialist positions of Grant. Tom is reading a book titled The Rise of the Colored Empires “by this man Goddard.” This is a combination of Grant’s very popular Passing of the Great Race, written in 1916 and reprinted many times thereafter, and another book written by a close colleague, Lothrup Stoddard, titled The Rising Tide of Color Against White World Supremacy. Grant wrote the introduction to that book.
“Everybody ought to read it,” the character of Tom Buchanan explains in The Great Gatsby, “The idea is if we don’t look out the white race will be — will be utterly submerged. It’s all scientific stuff; it’s been proved.”
The Passing of the Great Race, Grant’s very popular book, detailed the “racial history” of the world and affirms the Nordic Theory. It was the first non-German book ordered to be reprinted by the Nazis when they took power in Germany. Adolf Hitler later wrote to Grant personally to say, “The book is my Bible.”
It would be worthwhile to print a little of Grant’s ideas in his own words:
[Eugenics] is a practical, merciful, and inevitable solution of the whole problem, and can be applied to an ever widening circle of social discards, beginning always with the criminal, the diseased, and the insane, and extending gradually to types which may be called weaklings rather than defectives, and perhaps ultimately to worthless race types.
This kind of thinking came to a head in the Supreme Court decision Buck v Bell in 1927. The issue before the court was whether a state had the right to compel sterilizations of those considered unfit “for the health and protection of the state.” The decision was seen as an endorsement of “negative eugenics” in that it allows the state to eliminate from the gene pool those deemed defective or otherwise unsuitable. Oliver Wendell Holmes delivered the majority decision, including the classic line of eugenics: “Three generations of imbeciles is enough.” He couched his decision as a health policy issue, declaring sterilizations were like immunizations against possible contagion.
The Nazis already had a contempt for the Jews. With eugenicist theory and putting it on the basis of health policy, the Nazis began their T4 program of killing the institutionalized feeble-minded and other “life unworthy of life” by gassing them inside compartments of trucks. Eventually, the problem of the Jews was presented by the Nazis as a massive health issue. This is why Joseph Goebbels, Hitler’s propaganda minister, would produce films comparing Jews to rats. One exterminates rats for health reasons, the argument would go, and so too should the Jews be exterminated.
One more figure in the development of race theory should be mentioned: Houston Stewart Chamberlain. In 1899 he wrote his most important work, The Foundations of the Nineteenth Century. The book grouped all European peoples — Celts, Germans, Slavs, Greeks, Latins, et al. — into the “Aryan” race, with the Nordic and Germanic people at the helm. According to Chamberlain, the Germanic people are the heirs of the empires of Greece and Rome. When Germanic tribes sacked and ended the Roman Empire it was already in decline because it was controlled by Jews and other non-Europeans. Thus, according to Chamberlain, the Germanic peoples “saved” western civilization from Semitic domination. The concept of an “Aryan” race was an ideal of a racial elite. Chamberlain’s works had a marked effect upon German nationalist movements, such as the NSDAP (i.e. the Nazis). Hitler was a student of his works, and praised him as “The Prophet of the Third Reich.”
During this modern period the Jew was being rhetorically ravaged on every level. If one was a defender of the capitalist economic system the enemy of all was the Jewish communist or socialist feeding the fire of revolution. If one was a member of the oppressed working class the enemy of all was the Jewish banker or capitalist oppressing the people. No matter where one stood on the political spectrum, the Jew was the universal enemy. There was no escape for Jews.
Even in popular culture Jews could not escape public contempt. Henry Adams, a Harvard historian and grandson and great-grandson of Presidents, was a leading intellectual in America. His Mont Saint Michel and Chartres as well as The Education of Henry Adams, while brilliant and insightful in many ways, also contain dyspeptic anti-Semitic references throughout. Adams felt marginalized in a world of growing industrialization, and preferred a medieval “universe” inspired by the Virgin to a “multiverse” symbolized by the Dynamo. He became particularly virulent toward Jews after the Panic of 1893, seeing the economic calamity as a result of the manipulations of Jewish bankers.
Adams wrote a very popular novel, Democracy, in which one of the main characters was named Hartbeest Schneidekoupon. He is described as familiar with “the mysteries of currency and protection, to both which subjects he was devoted.” He is described as rich, with “a reputation of turning rapid intellectual somersaults.” He is also said to be “descended from all the Kings of Israel, and … prouder than Solomon in his glory.”
Schneidekoupon’s goal is to befriend over dinner Senator Ratcliffe, expected to become the new Secretary of the Treasury, in order “to keep him straight on the currency and the tariff.” He complains when the Senator at first refuses to attend the dinner that Senators are “all like that. They never think of anyone but themselves.” The irony fairly drips from the page.
Adams then introduces what is described as “a much higher type of character” than Schneidekoupon in a Nathan Gore. Gore is then described by Adams as “abominably selfish, colossally egoistic, and not a little vain.” But, in Adams’s view, he is nonetheless “a much higher type of character” than Schneidekoupon.
Adams presents Schneidekoupon as capitalistic, materialistic, self-centered and carnal, whose “rapid intellectual somersaults” suggest a lack of steadfastness when it comes to inner spiritual or ethical principles. The not so subtle message is the anti-Semitic image that these are the intrinsic traits that indicate the nature and character of the Jew. The overall effect is to present the Jew as something less than human.
Here is an interesting little item: Can you figure out what the following list of words have in common – “usurer, extortioner, cunning, heretic, lickpenny, harpy, schemer, crafty, shifty.” They are synonyms for the word Jew listed in Roget’s Thesaurus at the turn of the twentieth century.
So why do I bring up this laundry-list of anti-Jewish and anti-Semitic activity? Because they each, in their own way, played a role in the greatest crime ever perpetrated on humanity, the Shoah. So why did I teach the course? Because I believed – still do – that exposing the truth will prevent it from ever happening again.
There are those, though, who claim the Shoah never happened. And they, unfortunately, are being heard more and more in our irrational age. I am reminded of Yeats’s poem “The Second Coming”:
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer,
Things fall apart; the center cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
There are anti-Semitic voices currently in the land – not just in the Middle East but in Europe and the U.S. – demanding the blood of Jews. This may be as a result of a misguided support of “the oppressed” against their “oppressors” mixed with a belief in moral equivalency, or it may be the curdling voice of contempt spawned by generation after generation of hatred. Regardless, it is an anti-Semitic appeal to the bestial in the human heart.
Academia plays a role with its attempts to isolate Israel and its Jews though support of the BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions) movement. George Orwell, in a 1944 letter to John Middleton Murry, wrote that the test for intellectual honesty is a willingness to criticize one’s own position. It is that lack of intellectual honesty that is bothersome with academics pushing the BDS movement. Of course, they will say they are not anti-Jewish, but anti-Zionist. Well, to quote Shirley Temple in the film Fort Apache, “Pishtosh!”
The hypocrisy can be seen in the recent move by the Presbyterian Church USA to divest from companies doing business with Israel. Leading up to the vote by its General Assembly a program was put together titled Zionism Unsettled by a group called the Israel Palestine Mission Network. This “study guide” was written in consultation with various academics and Palestinian groups. Edward Said and Rashid Khalidi, well known spokesmen for the Palestinian cause, are presented as authoritative voices in this document with no attempt to take a critical view of their positions. In fact, despite heavy criticism of Israel there is no criticism of the Palestinians. There isn’t even any condemnation of the terrorist acts against Jews. None. Thus for those Presbyterians who put this study together, as well as those who supported it, they have failed Orwell’s test for intellectual honesty.
Their unwillingness to criticize Palestinian views was replicated in the recent fighting between Israel and Hamas. No criticism of Hamas could be heard from those academics of the BDS movement despite the indiscriminate targeting of Israeli civilians with thousands of rockets and mortars. Indeed, all the criticism was directed only toward the Israelis.
This uncritical acceptance of the views and actions of Hamas while rejecting as genocidal the actions of Israel is documented in an August 31, 2014, American Thinker article by Cinnamon Stillwell. After noting various Hamas supporters among the professoriate, mostly in Middle East Studies departments, she writes that “such cheerleading for Palestinian terrorism and willful disregard of historical facts discredits the individuals who advance it and the academic culture of Middle East studies that rewards it. It is politicized rather than objective, propagandistic rather than principled. American interests at home and abroad are ill-served by these apologists for terrorists.” But what is truth, when anti-Semites are motivated and justified by centuries of hatred?
Speaking of Said, he is perhaps best known for his book Orientalism, in which he criticizes and condemns Westerners for unthinkingly adopting a “discourse” about the Middle East established by “experts” and reified in the scholarly tomes of Western libraries. According to Said, such discourse has marginalized the peoples of the Middle East, including the Palestinians, making them less than human in the eyes of Westerners. There may be something to that argument. All I would say is that there is a 2,000-year-old anti-Jewish and anti-Semitic “discourse” that has marginalized Jews through the centuries and made them something less than human. The current anti-Israel voices, whether knowingly or not, are drawing from that discourse of prejudice and hatred in their condemnation of Jews. They simply echo what has been with us from generation to generation.
I firmly believe the situation is better now than it was before World War II. Many have come to recognize how Jews have been victimized through the ages and have worked to make amends. But then I was brought up short one day by Yale professor and one-time diplomat Charles Hill. Reading about his experience in Asia during China’s Cultural Revolution it was demonstrated that whatever cultural strides are made can be undone in a generation.
That is my concern today. A new outbreak of anti-Semitism, having no knowledge of anti-Jewish thought and action through the centuries, and having no desire to know, is propagating a renewal of anti-Semitic discourse that will propel us to ever more tragic consequences if we are not mindful. One sees the evidence all around us, with reports world-wide of rising attacks on Jews and Synagogues in Europe and even in the U.S. The Guardian on August 7, 2014, published a lengthy article on the rise of anti-Semitism in Europe that is making Jews in Europe fearful of a re-play of their Nazi experience. On August 20 of this year the New York Times published a column by Deborah Lipstadt noting the acts against Jews in Europe.
The war in Gaza no doubt acts as a spark. But it also occasions a renewed use of long-time canards used against Jews, as when a Hamas spokesman again raised the specter of “ritual murder.” Even an established hoax like the pamphlet The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion, a forgery put out by Russian agents to support the Czar against what were perceived as Jewish revolutionaries, is a staple of booksellers in the Islamic world. In that work one “learns” how the economic and political systems of the world are manipulated by secret Jewish cabals.
So I am concerned, and I feel the weight of my necklace around my neck. I know there are places in the world where wearing my necklace could cost me my life. Is that overwrought? I recall an interview of the novelist Mary Doria Russell in which she spoke of her conversion to Judaism. In it she remarked that her conversion was such that it could get her killed. I thought that was overwrought at the time. Now I am not so sure. Because I feel the weight of my necklace.
Ben Stein in a recent American Spectator article sums it up about as well as anyone. He comments how much we’ve learned this past summer: “We learned this summer that when terrorists kill Jews, that’s legitimate anger and frustration. When Jews defend themselves, that’s genocide. We learned that Europe, which Henry Ford called ‘that slaughterhouse of nations’ or something similar, is still chock a block with anti-Semites who are wildly happy to join hands with the emerging Muslim majority in Europe to torture the Jews. We learned that the elite media, especially the New York Times, will turn on Israel and the Jews and seek to curry favor with the enemies of Jews and of America in any way they can.”
God only knows what will come. I comfort myself by saying I am old and will soon depart this world, but then I think about my son. What kind of world will he have to negotiate and still maintain his integrity and a willingness to speak out against those who would do violence against Jews? I have tried to speak out in the classes I have taught, and can only hope my students are able to take what they learned and with integrity speak out on their own against those who would do violence against Jews. And I write because I want to continue to educate and do whatever I can to prevent unjust violence against Jews. I still believe that knowledge can be a balm to hatred.
We appear to be in a kind of limbo now that a ceasefire in Gaza has taken. Reports are that the West Bank and the Golan Heights are restive, contemplating open hostilities against Israel after seeing the Gaza fighting as inconclusive. Should such fighting break out, no doubt Israel will again be subject to worldwide condemnation as it yet again fights for its very life.
Israel will be subject to the new tropes of anti-Semitism extending 2,000 years of lies and hatred of Jews. It will be claimed that Jews are the “new Nazis” and that Gaza or the West Bank is the “new Auschwitz” and that Palestinians are the “new victims.” When that happens I shall again stand with Jews and Israel against the 2,000-year-old forces of darkness and hate, all the while feeling the weight of my necklace. It is what I must do.
@ M Devolin:
This reply is for both M Devolin at #36 and Keelie at #43.
M Devolin, I am much more in agreement with your take on Hitler’s motivation than I am with that of mrg3105. His explanation, i.e. that Hitler eliminated the Jews simply as a means to take their property and wealth to finance the rebuilding of the army after the Depression, is too facile. Anyone who’s read MEIN KAMPF knows Hitler did not need an economic justification to deal with the Jews. The German economic recovery that paid for Germany’s rise had more to do with the economic leadership of Hjelmut Schacht as Hitler’s Minister of Economics during the early years of Hitler’s Chancellorship. Those policies included a broad Keynesian approach. In addition, the Nazis looted the countries they overran, used forced labor to save costs, and printed counterfeit English pounds and American dollars on a massive scale, and other acts to sustain the German economy. AND, they confiscated property and wealth of Jews to help sustain the German economy. All of this, of course, was used to enrich themselves personally as well.
The one adjustment I would make to your post, M Devolin, and what Keelie refers to in her post (I think it’s a her; sorry if wrong on that), is that, while certainly a central element to Hitler’s destruction of the Jews, Church teaching of contempt for Jews and Judaism was neither a necessary nor a sufficient cause of the Shoah. It is certainly a contributing cause. I guess this is where I disagree with you as well, Keelie. In your words, I guess I am one of those looking for “other explanations” in addition to the anti-Jewish teachings of the Church. I would include among other factors Hitler’s political ideology, his belief in the theories of race then popular (which were advocated by racial theorists irrespective of religious beliefs), and the oh-so-scientific (though I think it pseudo-science along the lines of Lysenko’s work on genetics in the Soviet Union) notions of eugenics.
Let me take just one of those and give a brief sketch. The term “eugenics” is from the Greek meaning “well born” or “good beginning.” It was first coined by Francis Galton. He was influenced by Charles Darwin, who happened to be his cousin. Darwin’s book, THE ORIGIN OF THE SPECIES, was in turn inspired by the population theories of Malthus, who believed life is a raw competition for limited resources. Darwin saw this as the explanatory principle behind “natural selection.” The notion was the “strong” would better adapt to its environment and eliminate its weaker competition thereby guaranteeing limited resources for itself and, through “natural selection,” be able to pass along its genes into the future. I’m sure you know all that. What the eugenicists thought was, “Shouldn’t we help evolution along by eliminating the ‘bad stock’ (the weak, the infirm, the feeble-minded, etc.) rather than waste limited resources on them?” If we could eliminate the “poor stock” we would ensure that the strong will be “well born” and have a “good beginning.” Why oh why, eugenicists argue, are we wasting valuable limited resources on “poor stock”? Out of compassion? Eugenicists argue such compassion is, in fact, cruel by extending the lives of “life unworthy of life.” For the good of the community, of the state (Hegelian philosophy also plays a role here, but I’ll pass on that for now), requires the elimination of such types. Madison Grant defended eugenics thus: “Mistaken regard for what are believed to be divine laws and a sentimental belief in the sanctity of human life tend to prevent both the elimination of defective infants and the sterilization of such adults as are themselves of no value to the community. The laws of nature requires the obliteration of the unfit, and human life is valuable only when it is of use to the community or race.”
Most, when they cite Darwin’s book, do not use the subtitle, which is BY MEANS OF NATURAL SELECTION, OR THE PRESERVATION OF FAVOURED RACES IN THE STRUGGLE FOR LIFE. “Favoured Races,” hmmmm. With someone like Madison Grant, who combined his eugenics with racial theory, we have thoughts of eugenics being “a practical, merciful, and inevitable solution” to the problem. And what was the problem? According to Grant it was the “ever widening circle of social discards, beginning always with the criminal, the diseased, and the insane, and extending gradually to types which may be called weaklings rather than defectives, . . .” And how does he end that little nugget of wisdom? He ends it by suggesting such a policy could be extended, in his words, “ultimately to worthless race types.”
Here’s what’s important, Hitler read his stuff, along with other advocates of racial theory and eugenics. It was all scientific, after all. He not only read it, he ordered that Grant’s work be re-published in Germany. He came to see the Jews as a weakening of the “good stock” of the Deutsche Volk, along with the Roma, homosexuals, and others. I think what happened the years Hitler was in power was a terrible confluence of factors including Hitler’s political ideology, racial theories, eugenics, and the Church’s teaching of contempt for Jews that suffused German society at the time. Historically, there are many instances of pogroms and the killings of Jews, but nothing on the scale of the Shoah. Why is that? The technological ability to carry it out no doubt played a factor, but I would suggest it also needed the playing of the eugenics card. In short, while I know Church teaching of contempt for Jews and Judaism played a central role, there are other factors at work that will not allow for overly-simplistic explanations. Whatever the full explanation may be, it won’t be easily reduced to a bumper sticker. That said, we certainly know a lot of what explains it, and the comments of each of you go toward that explanation. Thanks for your good posts.
keelie Said:
This is wrong
@ Ted Belman:
Where can we find this article? And what was your purpose in writing it?
@ keelie: I’m afraid that if “the (returning) savior” does not fit the pattern assigned to him in the minds of Tommy Waller, Pastor Hagee, and those of the same ilk, they will shun him and ultimately kill him as an imposter.
keelie – Waller and Hagee won’t have time to act. The pious inhabitants of Bayit V’gan, Southern Bet Shemesh, Mea Sharim, and Petach Tikva will go after him first. Presuming he survives this crowd, then nobody else will pose a real threat.
We’ve been so poisoned by the long Exile that few of us remember what we’re supposed to do now that we’re here. Rabbi Goren understood. And I believe Dayan understood too, but he was committed to making sure this didn’t happen… exactly at the moment when it would have been easiest.
Many of us are distracted by the mass media spectacle, trying to play the political game even though it’s clear that we will never be able to do anything through the political system as it is structured. Most ‘religious’ people are waiting for a magic-worker, and for a Temple to drop from the sky (presumably with plumbing and electricity all installed). We’re stuck in a collective Sisyphus and Tantalus cycle.
Yamit made a nice list of what the Masiach will do. But none of that will happen just because of a single individual – a magic worker. It will happen only when enough of us are mature enough to get out of our Id-dominated and Ego-driven scheming and b.s.ing and focus on the down-to-earth, practical reality of bringing the Malchut into existence… starting with a King from the line of David.
As a reference, perhaps we can look to RaMBaM for guidance http://www.kesser.org/moshiach/rambam.html
There are many candidates who qualify for the position of a King… the first qualification: being a descendant of King David. Some of them have been in Israel for a long time. Mostly, they’re the object of ridicule and scorn by others. And this is generally true of the whole idea of a restored Malchut – it is not really taken seriously, even though it’s been the major focus of the daily prayer cycle for about 1,800 years.
For some reason the refrain of an old folk song comes to mind right now… ‘now roll on buddy… don’t you roll so slow. how can I roll when my wheels won’t go?’
@ Ted Belman:
Who are you directing this to?
Ten years ago I wrote The Historical Jesus. OK, give me your best shot.
@ keelie</a
What is the Messiah supposed to accomplish? The Bible says that he will:
A. Build the Third Temple (Ezekiel 37:26-28).
B. Gather all Jews back to the Land of Israel (Isaiah 43:5-6).
C. Usher in an era of world peace, and end all hatred, oppression, suffering and disease. As it says: “Nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall man learn war anymore.” (Isaiah 2:4)
D. Spread universal knowledge of the God of Israel, which will unite humanity as one. As it says: “God will be King over all the world—on that day, God will be One and His Name will be One” (Zechariah 14:9)
Where does the Jewish concept of Messiah come from? One of the central themes of Biblical prophecy is the promise of a future age of perfection characterized by universal peace and recognition of God. (Isaiah 2:1-4; Zephaniah 3:9; Hosea 2:20-22; Amos 9:13-15; Isaiah 32:15-18, 60:15-18; Micah 4:1-4; Zechariah 8:23, 14:9; Jeremiah 31:33-34)
Many of these prophetic passages speak of a descendant of King David who will rule Israel during the age of perfection. (Isaiah 11:1-9; Jeremiah 23:5-6, 30:7-10, 33:14-16; Ezekiel 34:11-31, 37:21-28; Hosea 3:4-5)
Since every King is a Messiah, by convention, we refer to this future anointed king as The Messiah.
@ M Devolin:
Absolutely true. In fact this is so obvious that I can’t understand why it hasn’t been accepted with little question. Instead, people run around trying to “investigate” the causes of the Holocaust.
As I’ve said many times here, just listen to the language used by the Christian leaders in the Middle East, and some of their colleagues in the West. Better still, read Giulio Meotti’s book shown above on this site. It hasn’t stopped. The Jews are reviled so much by these “Church Fathers” that it is better in their minds that their flocks are decimated by the Muslims than that they co-operate with the Jews of Israel. All based on “scriptures” made up – “extensively edited” – at Nicea, as mrg3105 indicates.
This goes far deeper than a “mental problem”.
@ yamit82:
As I mentioned, the “Messiah” whoever or whatever he (or she) may be, will most likely be found in a slum somewhere or in a local soup kitchen. This is not what any of us expect; we expect – at least those who do expect – the “Messiah” to arise in glory and light and be “highly obvious,” but that is not how things work in this world. where the story (the “narrative”) is worth far more than the actuality.
@ M Devolin:
M Devolin, I had a wonderful, wonderful, wonderful response to your post #36, but in writing it on the expanded screen you get through the symbol next to the arrowedABC above, I lost it all when I went to save it — TWICE. I think tomorrow I’ll try it again on an MS Word document and then cut and paste. I don’t know why I lost two fairly long posts, but no doubt my incompetence had something to do with it. Best, ron
@ mrg3105:
Now that I’ve re-read my earlier post, I have a better response. I wrote Arab antisemitic voices “at this time” in contradistinction to European or Christian voices. Charges of “ritual murder” and use of THE PROTOCOLS is far more prevalent in Arab countries. Thus, “at this time” such charges are more likely to come from Arab antisemitic voices than those of Europeans or Christians. Oh you’ll hear ’em from Europeans and Christians, especially use of THE PROTOCOLS, at this time, but not as prevalent as in Islamic countries. At least that’s how I judge it to be. Thanks for helping me to clarify this, assuming I have.
@ mrg3105:
Thanks for your response. I am quite well aware of all that you have written. My comment about Arab antisemitic voices “at this time” was in the context of what I wrote about the Hamas/Israel fighting being a “spark” for antisemitic activity. I remarked on what I saw concurrently in the Arab world. Trust me, I am very familiar with the history of antisemitism within Islam. Where I live, though, I am generally confronted with Christian ignorance if not bigotry. So that’s what I seek to address. Thanks again for your post. And by the way, it’s not just words. It is action.
Ron, no one is trashing you. Its just your perspective. Like the “Arab antisemitic voices” at ‘this’ time. Actually there are no OTHER Arab voices that have been heard at ANY time. Arabs, and I mean the vast 99% Muslim majority, were happy with the Nazi Holocaust! By and large they wanted to ‘finish the job’, and most still do. This is also true of the non-Arab Muslims within ~1,000km of Israel.
Occasionally there is an odd Muslim that comes out of hiding to say “We should be friends with the Jews”, but in terms of a viable political alternative – there isn’t one. Even when Sadat signed the Camp David Accords, in Egypt everyone knew this was a delaying tactic to trick the Israelis.
The “ritual murder” charge is widely believed in the Islamic world, and if you go to any Islamic city, chances are that 80% of the individuals asked, will assure you they are true. But, in case you don’t read Arabic, the old ‘tricks’ of the antisemitic ‘trade’ have been replaced by the new.
Did you hear the one about the Jews destroying the World Centre so the Americans can kill Muslims?
What about the one about Israel planning to make Muslim men infertile by adding ‘something’ to Coca Cola (Jews work in that company).
There are even more irrational claims, like the ‘Jewish’ mobile phones that Israel spies through. This was a claim started when a new telco company I think in Egypt was giving away a phone with every contract. Someone traced one of the company’s directors to a venture capital investment house that also had an Israeli partner.
If European Christians just hated Jews for their unwillingness to ‘be reasonable’, the Muslims are positively paranoid.
And, it has always been that way, Turks excepted until the late 19th century.
@ M Devolin:
Well, if your Irish sensibilities can take a response from a “nutter” like me (I’ve taken a lot of grief over the years over my last name, alas!), what I was trying to convey was that while the Hamas/Israel conflict may have sparked antisemitic rhetoric and acts in Europe and the United States, which I noted in the previous paragraph, it also led to a continuation of the centuries-old “discourse” of antisemitism by bringing up old canards like the “ritual murder” charge and renewed use of THE PROTOCOLS to expound on the global conspiracy of Jews, mostly coming at this time from Arab antisemitic voices. Different ethnic groups, same discourse. I may have been unclear with that “but”. What I am suggesting is that such beliefs/rhetoric are always present, though not necessarily vocalized. But when the occasion arises, when the spark comes, it comes gushing forth in all its repellent mendacity. Thanks for your question. It’s nice to read something that isn’t trashing me. And I hope I clarified what I wrote at least somewhat. Thanks again.
“Hitler did not murder millions of Jews because the Church told him.”
No, Hitler murdered millions of Jews because, thanks to the Church and their demonization of the Jew, he reckoned nobody would mind because, according to the Church Fathers, they deserved it. Hitler tapped into Germany’s (and Europe’s) latent anti-Jewish hatred. Islam is today tapping into this same latent anti-Jewish hatred the way Adolf Hitler tapped into it prior to and during WW2.
“The war in Gaza no doubt acts as a spark.”
Mr. Nutter, can you expound this statement. Your use of the word “but” in the next sentence, as though in contradistinction to the words “the war in Gaza,” leaves me wondering what you’re getting at here.
What is this article about? Christian apologetics? Or is this another history lesson for the Jews? We know our history, and that of the others which they prefer to ‘forget’.
Christianity is not the other side of a necklace. Its not even the same ‘object’. Christianity was a panacea to Hellenised Jews that wanted to ‘feel good’ without remaining culturally Jewish. If only they could find a new crowd to hang out with that would accept them as they are. Failing finding a crowd, they created one that anyone could join.
This is how it all began.
I have no doubt that there existed a Jewish man who was deeply offended by what he saw as a failing in the Jewish leadership of accepting the Greco-Roman yoke. I also have no doubt that he ‘made waves’ by ‘rocking the boat’ because he probably was not PC so far as the leadership in Yerushalaim were concerned, which brought the wrath of the occupying power on the population.
‘Jesus’ or whatever his Jewish name was, never wrote anything…strange that. But, we know now that the ROMAN Church extensively edited the texts that now serve as the basis of its dogma. ‘Jesus’ was CERTAINLY speaking to the culturally-Jewish demographic since being a shepherd he was a) unlikely to speak Greek, and b)unlikely to have been accepted by the Hellenised Jews who didn’t speak either Aramaic or Lashon Kodesh.
It is for this reason that Christianity had, and still does get it very wrong. They are following texts written by people ignorant of their own culture and language, who were only able to paraphrase some of the points ‘Jesus’ was making as derived from both the Mikra and divrei HaZaL. This was evidence of their gross ignorance for dikduk is everything in Mikra.
The effect is something like trying to establish a country based on a US model via verbal paraphrased rendition of a US Constitution, by laymen, using third-hand sources, translated by sources unknown. And this, when American judges do not understand their own Constitution!
Christianity then is a hijacking of a political start-up at the initiating stage, its reorientation towards purely personal and selfish goals, and subsequent adulteration of this towards a re-establishment of an ideological backbone for the new Christian Roman Empire. But even the Pope’s castle was to be built on the Jewish ‘corpse’ of a Vatikin minyan Roman Jews were allowed to have not far from the dump.
The Early Church Fathers were predominantly Greek, or Hellenised Romans, so why would they acknowledge the Jews. Greeks were well known as a culture with a superiority complex, though as history proves, the claim is undeserved. Consider the Greek vs Jewish approach to relationships with other societies. Jews learned the language of the others, set up trading posts, and gave due to these cultures when they learned something useful. Greeks did not leant any other language, tried to impose own culture and language on others, and never acknowledged the borrowing of anything from others, claiming their own ‘discovery’.
The Roman Church presided over 1700 years of dispensations to make war. There is scarcely a year within the period from Constantine to today when war was not fought somewhere in the ‘Christian world’. Europe made no progress until the centres of its development moved from Rome to capitals established by ‘barbarians’: Paris, Madrid, Vienna, London, Berlin. Athens is a tourist attraction.
Jews were just an inconvenient distraction; a people caught in the cogs of Christian ‘civilization’, as indeed they were in the ‘Islamic world’, living as near to the condition of slavery as conceivable.
Now that the ‘Christian world’ is falling apart at the core, it suddenly discovered “Jesus was Jewish”?! Love, Peace? And at the same time Europeans, now largely atheists or agnostics, sending millions in funds to terrorists and boycotting Israel?
And the problem is really that Christians DO NOT UNDERSTAND.
There is a MAJOR difference between themselves and the Jews, at least those Jews that remain culturally-Jewish. UNLIKE Christians, Jews DO NOT BELIEVE IN GOD. ‘Judaism’ is not a ‘religion’, and does not rely on faith. Jews follow the Torah, not ‘the Bible’, because they KNOW there is GOD, and His word is final. Jews do this because we follow LAW not apostolic ‘letters’ trice-edited. In Law rules are simple. Make the case, bring witnesses, and produce evidence. And we do.
It is entirely inconvenient for Christianity to have to try and CONVINCE Jews for 1700 years to accept their case without witnesses and evidence, a process no secular or even Christianity’s own courts would accept. It has been entirely inconvenient to have neighbours over the 1700 years that are the living proof of the shallowness of the Christian message. This is perhaps because ancient Jews were the original missionaries, and don’t accept the Greek ‘egg’ teaching the Jewish ‘chicken’ how to find the feed.
So it seems to me Jews don’t need a ‘necklace’ of ‘love and understanding’, since this message is the same one the Greeks tried, and it failed. Give me the tiara of gold.
Christianity has failed. It failed because its foundations were built on sand. If you don’t know what that means, consult a qualified builder. It started to fracture early, and is now held together by gaffer tape and gum. It is fractured, and maintained only by the willingness of the followers to suspend their rational faculty and question. Its largest membership growth has been in undeveloped and poorly educated segments of the global demographic that are too busy eking out living to stop and think about the message. This is how the Church was created, by proselytising to the ignorant.
A few notes. Jonathan Stain is Reform. That is, neither he nor those like him accept that GOD has the final word. They think they know better.
Hitrel did not murder millions of Jews because the Church told him. Nazis simply needed the funds to build their armies in a Germany broke by the Great Depression, so they stole, and murdered the witnesses.
Thanks for your ‘message’ of concern, but words are cheap, which is why Christians deliver them in massive volumes. Actions though are more telling.
When I see tens of thousands of Christians on the streets in support of Israel, I’ll believe the words.
bernard ross Said:
No only the Saudis the rest don’t matter. What do you think and why do you think the Saudis have purchased all the military hardware and ordnance for. They can’t use it or maintain them by themselves. They are for Egypt in the next war against Israel. ISIS will become a Saudi Golem who will target the Saudis when they feel it convenient…
OPEC run Saudi cartel have single handedly forced oil prices down to to hurt Iran and America, probably Russia too for not playing ball with the Saudis. They aim to kill Fraking.
The Saudis wanted Saddam taken out, and Assad. Don’t know about Gaddafi but he was a loose cannon getting close to the Chinese and Russians and threatening gold dinar as the alternative to Dollars for oil.
Personally I think the Americans and the Brits are out of their league and are being led around by the Saudis.
They see Iran as an existential threat will will pull out all stops to thwart Iran even colluding with Israel to that end.
@ bernard ross:
No I got from Israel TV Arabic analysis Talking head expert.
Coming from an Irish background, I really get a kick out of the author’s last name. I’m just sayin’.
yamit82 Said:
i did not read that in your link
“It is entirely legitimate to view the reforms irrespective of the antisemitism.”
Problem is, Ted, that Luther’s antisemitism comes with his reforms. And Adolf Hitler built the Autobahn. You can’t have one without the other. The damage is done. You can’t turn back the clock and pretend that Christianity is no longer dangerous to Jews, that it didn’t precipitate the Holocaust. And I see nothing wrong with readers being offended with Yamit’s posts. Being overtly Jewish is offensive to Christians simply because Jews aren’t supposed to be here. You’re all supposed to be burning in Hell for killing Jesus (or so the story goes). I’m with Yamit on this one. Luther was an asshole. “Injustice never rules forever.” -Seneca
yamit82 Said:
I have speculated prior that the GCC need the massive Egyptian army to fight their battles if necessary against Iran and its proxies if a full war breaks out. That is why I believe the GCC fund egypt. I think the GCC see Egypt as their Hessians.
yamit82 Said:
I read it but it offers no direction just “some say”..As you already know I never bought the GCC qatar split and therefore by deduction the Egypt qatar split. I predicted they would soon bee back together. Two dog owners who bleong to the same club walk different dogs. The dogs dont get along so that the dog owners pretend to be in a quarrel or it is easier to get the dogs to do their tricks when they beleive their owners are in a quarrel. the MB and hamas dog can be influenced and manipulated by qatar because it maintains an image of “resistance”. qatar was the owner who weaned hamas off Iran for the GCC and enabled the recuriting of MB jihadis for the sunni war in Syria. Now that Morsi and his cadre have been knocked out of influence of hamas and the MB there is less of a need for the scam. However, Qatar is still in a position to influence, control and employ MB due to its “resistance” credentials. A dog and pony show, a peanut shell game….similar to all the so called sunni jihadi groups.
Wasnt sisi an intelligence chief prior?
Ted Belman Said:
I assume it was NOT the comments of #2
yamit82 Said:
proving that the persistent propagation of the myth of moderate islam is successful and that Goebbels methodology was correct
@ bernard ross
MEMRI: November 2, 2014 Clip No. 4669
Retired General Ahmad Al-Gawhari: Egypt Will Wage War against Anyone Blocking the Bab Al-Mandab Strait
http://www.memritv.org/clip/en/4669.htm
Following are excerpts are from an interview with Egyptian General [Ret.] Ahmad Al-Gawhari, former commander, Egyptian Army Anti-Terror Unit, which
aired on Al-Tahrir TV on November 2, 2014:
Ahmad Al-Gawhari: I do not think that Iran will go as far as to block the Bab Al-Mandab Strait, because if someone tries to attack, block, or control this strait, this could lead to war – maybe even a world war – in whichnuclear bombs would be used.
[…]
If this happens, I believe that a military confrontation will ensue.
Interviewer: Military confrontation? Launched by Egypt?
Ahmad Al-Gawhari: Yes.
Interviewer: Against whom? Against the Houthis?
Ahmad Al-Gawhari: Against whoever blocks the Bab Al-Mandab Strait.
@ bernard ross:
Not so fast
Egypt: General Intelligence Chief Replaced
Director of Egypt’s General Intelligence Directorate, and the head of the war on terror in Sinai, was replaced by the head of the national security
agency. Egyptian officials “the replacement – on health grounds”, others say: “there might be a connection to the reconciliation with Qatar”
IsraelDefense 21/12/2014
http://www.israeldefense.com/?CategoryID=483&ArticleID=3269
Egypt: General Intelligence Chief Replaced Egyptian intelligence chief, Mohamed Ahmed Fareed Al-Tuhami, is replaced by the head of the national
security agency General Khaled Fawzy. Informed sources told the media that
the replacement is related to “health issues”, but othersbelieve that it is actually a dismissal because Tuhami “failed in his mission to fight
terrorism in the Sinai, and that the dismissal has connection to reconciliation attempt between Egypt and Qatar”.
Egyptian President, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, appointed Tuhami to head the General Intelligence Directorate in July 2013 after overthrowing the “Muslim Brotherhood”. Tuhami is considered a bitter enemy “of Hamas and the Muslim
Brotherhood organization”. Some media outlets reported that the date of the announcement of replacing Tuhami is probably not accidental.
The announcement came in light of the President al-Sisi’s meeting with the Emir of Qatar in an attempt to heal the conflict between Qatar and Egypt,
caused by Qatar’s support for Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood. However, as said, Egypt emphasizes that there is no connection between the two issues
and that the replacement comes in light of the heal condition of the outgoing intelligence chief.
This is the Guy who held the file of Israel and was the Israeli direct connect with Egypt and SISI. The General replacing him is unknown to Israel and how long if at all it will take to assess and reconnect the relationships?
This guy was very tight with Sisis and even paved the way for the Sisi takeover. It’s said here the Saudis ordered him out, for what reason???? They say here it has nothing to do with Qatar?
@ yamit82:
yamit82, I liked the video. As for your original post on my essay, apology accepted and appreciated.
@ Ted Belman:
@ bernard ross:
Off topic but interesting
Voters Say Taliban Not True to Islam
Sunday, December 21, 2014
http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/current_events/israel_the_middle_east/voters_say_taliban_not_true_to_islam
Americans strongly believe the Taliban, the Islamic fundamentalist group in
Afghanistan who last week took credit for the murder of 130 school children,
does not truly represent its faith.
Just 16% of Likely U.S. Voters think the Taliban represents true Islamic
beliefs, according to a new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey.
Sixty-nine percent (69%) say the group which ruled its country for six years
as the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan does not represent the true beliefs of
Islam. Another 16% are undecided.
The national survey of 1,000 Likely Voters was conducted on December 17-18,
2014 by Rasmussen Reports. The margin of sampling error is +/- 3 percentage
points with a 95% level of confidence. Field work for all Rasmussen Reports
surveys is conducted by Pulse Opinion Research, LLC.
@ bernard ross:
Best to leave sleeping dogs lie.
My comment embarrassed Ted and I can understand his position
nough said I don’t easily apologize and it is their holiday season let em have a good time for the next few days without my sardonic comments.
peace on earth good will towards men and “All That Jazz”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IyXYPsDsOHY
@ bernard ross:
I don’t think it is important what the comment was. I felt Yamit crossed over the line and he agreed. Nuf said.
yamit82 Said:
I pronounce you OCD free and devoid of malicious “marketing” intentions. 😛
Ted Belman Said:
Ted, please explain what “ridiculous” comments are referred to here by the emailer. I read Yamits comment #2 and it made complete sense to me. The one you censored, or “corrected”, was not posted.
keelie Said:
Isiah 53:1
@ Ted Belman:
I’m afraid that if “the (returning) savior” does not fit the pattern assigned to him in the minds of Tommy Waller, Pastor Hagee, and those of the same ilk, they will shun him and ultimately kill him as an imposter.
Might be that Ted will see fit to delete my comment too. Let’s see.
Years ago, Paul Eidelberg pointed out that Israel doesn’t need ‘aid’ from the United States. First, because this ‘aid’ comes with conditions such as spending most of the money on U.S. approved vendors. But the most important reason, for me, was this: more money comes from tourism each year than from this false aid.
And if the U.S. were required to pay fair prices for use of our ports, airstrips, etc., we wouldn’t need to worry about money… that’s because we give them 1,000 times the value of what they ‘give’ in their conditional aid packages. (And whatever they ‘give’ us is also given to those who seek to eliminate us.)
However, that ‘aid’ benefits the small number of military/technology industries that keep Israel going; and these industries are mainly controlled by people who are ideologically ‘Left’.
It’s true there are some allegedly ‘Right Wing’ types who have successful businesses (such as Bennett), but it seems clear that the Ben Gurion/Rabin type of ‘red diaper Socialists’ dominate the business scene here.
Technically, Israel is a classical oligarchy – but saying this often elicits responses such as was made to whatever Yamit said about the followers of Yeshu.
But here’s the real kicker – how many Jews in this country (including scrupulously observant ‘orthodox’) would not be able to eat were it not for the very real aid that’s provided by a number of Christian non-profits?
Hardly anyone wants to talk about this fact… when it comes to actual compassion for human beings in trouble, don’t count on the Jewish Establishment for help. Yes, there are some Jewish orgs who do help… but not like the followers of Yeshu.
Personally, I’m convinced that everyone should be free to believe whatever they want… so long as they don’t impose their beliefs on me (‘Your freedom ends where my nose begins’). But that’s not what’s going on when someone deploys the ‘Judeo-Christian’ myth. Accepting this idea actually means giving power to those who, historically, saw themselves as replacing us. Yet there’s something to the idea that we share some common values (properly called the Noahide Laws). In reality, we say ‘Judeo-Christian’ out of politeness, and also because we need their friendship (and they need ours). Right now, the followers of Yeshu aren’t a physical or even an ideological threat to us.
In the future restored Malchut, there will be this genuine tolerance. Everyone will come to Jerusalem, go up to the Temple, and bring their offerings… just as it was in the past. But it will be a Jewish Nation, following Jewish Law, and not dependent on conditional aid from anyone.
How far we are from this can’t be determined by anyone. All those who’re making calculations and using Tanach to justify their ‘prophetic’ conclusions will always be wrong. It will happen, for certain. But it seems, right now, that we’re not even close (yet, I could be wrong). Still, we carry on and some of us kick and fuss and make others uncomfortable with our observations.
Simply put, we need to focus on those who obstruct our way towards genuine sovereignty…. and unfortunately we have the same kinds of problems among us as were the source of the holiday we’re in the middle of right now. But we only have the rhetorical Maccabean part… the military-political aspect keeps getting nipped in the bud or ending up in a dismal room in Petach Tikva.
I have no problem admitting to error when as Ted showed me in his rebuke of my comment.
That said, I am pleased you read my comments and hope you will continue to do so.
While I can admit to error I do not admit to being “humble”.
A Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to You.
I received this email from a prominent pro-Israel writer.
@ yamit82:Thank you. Apology appreciated.
I received this email today.
yamit82 Said:
next, as I also said, we will see the rapprochement with obama and Sisi… he just sent some apaches. the excuse will probably declare that egypt is now democratic after their march 2015 parliamentary elections, coincidentally in timing with Israel.
@ yamit82:
unrelated but remember I told you this is how it would go?
I accept your criticism and apologize to you both.
Thanks.
@ yamit82:The whole thing was an attack on him. By the way, I don’t think he is Jewish.
You choose to attack him for being concerned about his son because he didn’t show concern for Israel. His article wasn’t about Israel it was about fighting the antisemitism in Christianity. He expressed concern that his son would find it more difficult to wage the same battle.
You attacked him because what he wrote could be found with research. So what. You missed the point of the article and attacked him personally as being ignorant.
You attacked him because, after outing Luther as a disgusting antisemite, he found some merit in Luther’s reforms. I don’t see the conflict. I am concerned that people know how bad Luther was. He was very clear on this. It is entirely legitimate to view the reforms irrespective of the antisemitism.
I was embarrassed because after corresponding with him I choose to post his article which makes the same points that I made in my recent article on the holocaust and Church, and then when he is my guest here you treated him so disdainfully.
@ yamit82:
Not sure if he came from a family of (Jewish) psychiatrists… All I know is that to crazy people, being normal is a sure sign of craziness.
Look, I don’t care what the narrative was or is. The fact is that Jesus was billed as being a Jew (as were all his disciples) and did stuff in Jerusalem. The newly-minted Catholic Church chose to ignore and perhaps even deny this even though they knew it was a fact, as do you and I. The Church and its various offshoots thus promoted defamation of the Jews knowing full well that the focus of their attention was as much a “dirty Jew” as every other Jew.
One of the main problems, aside from the fact that he may not have actually existed, is that we Jews assume that he was the forerunner of the subsequent religion known as Christianity, and was therefore directly responsible for what happened subsequently, beginning about 400 years after his death. Frankly, I believe he would have been utterly against the setting up of a disgustingly dishonest political organization in his name, an organization that used fairy stories couched in highly emotional language to further their ends. In other words, the Church put words in his mouth that he most likely never said. Again, in other words, he had no control over what went on for almost 2000 years in his name. What it did show is that political power and religion do not mix.
As George Bernard Shaw once stated, “Christianity sounds like a great idea; it’s a pity it’s never been tried.”
It was critical but not an attack and if you read carefully what he wrote and what I marked for criticism you may disagree with my language but I find it difficult to understand what you were in disagreement with.
Yamit, I removed your disgusting attack on the author.
@ keelie:
Jesus never existed and is a historical mythical character.
At best a composite of several real individuals but long before the myth of the NT gospels.
There is no reason why we Jews should accept blindly the christian narrative uncritically. Do you accept Greek mythjology as being true?
The ultimate big lie is the existence of Jesus himself who according to christian sources was a Jewish apostate and ignoramus. Probably schizophrenic and his family according to the gospels certainly thought him mad.
The ultimate irony is that every word of hate and defamation would directly apply to Yehoshua (Jesus).
I find it difficult (impossible) to believe that for about 1700 years (since Nicea) the “Church Fathers” were able to either suppress or ignore the fact that Jesus was a Jew.
That has to be the ultimate “Big Lie”. In effect the lie that was never verbalized, never documented.
God is not mocked…